


Scouring the Rusty Trombone

by Amuly



Series: Loser Dads [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Beards (Facial Hair), Covid Fic, Domestic Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M, Married Life, Old Married Couple, Parenthood, Rimming, quarantine fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 08:48:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24348253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amuly/pseuds/Amuly
Summary: During the great Stay At Home orders of 2020, Eddie decides to try his hand at growing a beard. Which normally Richie would support--pathetic as said beard may be--except for one small problem: his husband LOVES to eat him out. And rim jobs+scratchy beards = one unhappy Tozier.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: Loser Dads [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774792
Comments: 40
Kudos: 252





	Scouring the Rusty Trombone

They were making out lazily in bed, laying side by side and neither quite willing to make the effort to climb on top or sink down just yet. Eddie’s fingers were absently playing with Richie’s balls, and Richie occasionally pushed his hips against Eddie’s to feel Eddie’s erection against his, but that was as far as they’d gotten.

Richie moaned as Eddie sucked on his tongue and pulled back, coaxing his tongue out of his own mouth and into Eddie’s. Richie licked at the inside of Eddie’s mouth with gusto before leaning back to catch his breath. Eddie nipped at his lips, trying to get him to stay, whiskers of his beard tickling at Richie’s nose as he did.

“Want a beej?”

Eddie hummed, fingers still teasing at Richie’s balls. His eyes were focused on Richie’s lips, like he was looking at Richie as a mere sex object. Richie loved it. Objectify the hell out of him, baby.

After leaning forward to kiss him sloppily some more, Eddie finally answered: “Mmm, maybe later. I want to eat you out first.”

“Oh, uh-” Richie stifled a wince. Fortunately (unfortunately?) Eddie was already slipping down, shoving the covers back as he positioned himself between Richie’s legs.

“Mmmm,” Eddie hummed again, nuzzling at Richie’s thighs. He lifted Richie’s calves in both hands and easily tossed them over his shoulders, yanking Richie’s hips down. Okay, haha, fuck, Richie was going to have to say something soon, now, like, _now_ -

“Hey, hang on, hot stuff, whoa.”

Pressing gentle kisses to Richie’s thighs, beard tickling a path further and further up, Eddie tilted his face just enough to frown at Richie. “Hmm?”

“Ha, uh… No, hey, don’t- just wait a second, would you?”

Frown lines between his eyebrows deepening, Eddie lifted his head enough so that his face wasn’t pressed against Richie’s thighs anymore. Richie breathed a sigh of relief.

“What? Do you have to take a shit or something?”

Actually, it’d be the perfect excuse. Maybe Richie could say he hadn’t wiped well today? Or he’d blown his asshole out from Taco Tuesday or whatever they had for dinner last night?

But… Eddie always knew when he was lying. It probably didn’t help that Richie always got a case of the giggles when he tried. So instead he said:

“I just want to do you instead, tonight. Yeah?” Richie put on his best sexy face, which he knew wasn’t saying much, but hey, he tried. He stroked one hand down the side of Eddie’s cheek, then back up, tangling it in Eddie’s hair. “Wouldn’t you like that?”

“What’s going on?” Eddie demanded. Richie now had his _full_ attention. Great. Nothing to be done about it now.

“Look, Eds, it’s no big deal, I just need a couple day’s break.”

“From what? Me eating your ass?”

“Uh… yeah.”

“Bullshit.” Eddie glared at him. “What’s going on?”

“What? Nothing!” Richie squeaked. “Nothing, why- I just don’t want to be the recipient of anulingus tonight, is that so… a man can have preferences! No means no, honey.”

“Are you cheating on me?”

“What?! Eddie!”

“Well then what the fuck’s going on?”

Richie sighed. What a fucking asshole. Fine: he wanted the truth? The honest, rough (so fucking _rough_ …) truth? _Fine_. He got it. Whether or not he could handle it.

“Your beard basically exfoliated me taint to rectum last night, Eddie. My asshole needs a break to grow back the two layers of skin you sandpapered off last night with that pathetic soup-catcher of yours.”

Eddie stared at him for a long second, absorbing everything. Hesitantly one of his hands drifted to his jaw before dropping hard, clenching in his lap.

“You could have just said you don’t like my beard.”

“I didn’t say that. Who said that? I’m just telling you my ass needs a break because your beard is more brillo pad than it is Egyptian cotton.”

“I’m not shaving my beard. I never get the chance to grow facial hair and since I’m working from home-”

“I never said that! Why do you keep thinking I’m saying things I didn’t?! I just mean-”

“You just mean: you don’t like my beard.”

“Let’s be honest, honey, calling it a ‘beard’ is a little bit of a stretch.”

Eddie dropped Richie’s legs from both his shoulders, squirming up from the foot of the bed back over to his side. He glared down at Richie.

“If you don’t like it, then I just won’t eat you out,” Eddie said. He crossed his arms.

“Again, I didn’t say I don’t _like_ it, I just miss the extra layer of skin it peeled off my asshole.”

“So we’re agreed,” Eddie stated. He rolled over to grab his kindle off the side table. “I’m not eating you out anymore.”

Richie scoffed. “Like that isn’t going to hurt you just as much as it hurts me.”

Eddie’s resolve cracked, just a momentary flicker of realization across his expression. But he thumbed pointedly at the side of his kindle. Not quite as dramatic as flipping a page noisily, but the message it was meant to convey was the same. Richie rolled over and grabbed his glasses and phone from his nightstand. Well. Message received.

* * *

Their cold war started on a Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, Richie was up messing around with Jean, coloring with her at the kitchen table when Eddie walked in from his run, still breathing hard.

“Hey sweaty,” Richie cooed. He turned his face up for a kiss.

Eddie strode right past him for a glass of water from the fridge. He smiled at Jean.

“What are you coloring?” he asked Jean. He didn’t look at Richie.

So that was how it was going to be, huh? Richie made a face at Eddie, which he didn’t acknowledge. Yeah, we’ll see who cracks first.

“It’s Athena!” Jean shouted. She held up her… _abstract_ interpretation of Athena to Eddie. “She’s the goddess of being smart, and she has a spear, and a helmet, and she goes-” Jean shot her fists out in front of her, drawing crumpling in her palms. She made laser noises with her mouth. “Psshhoo! Pshhoo! Waaahhmmmm!”

“Man, now I think _I_ should have drawn Athena,” Richie whines. “All I drew was dumb Artemis.” He held up his drawing of a woman riding a stag shooting arrows in a forest. Since school was kind of on infinite hiatus, him and Eddie were teaching Jean whatever they wanted to. Right now, Richie was neck-deep in Greek mythology with her.

Jean’s eyes widened as she took in Richie’s drawing. “Who’s that?! Papa, papaaaa!!”

“Do you want to read the story?”

“Yes!”

Jean threw down her crayons and clambered down her chair just so she could crawl her way into Richie’s lap. He scooped her up, her arms wrapped tight around his neck as he went to their “home schoolroom” (a random corner of Jean’s playroom that they’d marked off when schools went online-only) to grab the storybook he had planned for today’s reading.

“Okay, here you go. Teach Papa about Artemis,” Richie instructed her.

Jean scowled, even as she settled herself in Richie’s lap, book held in both hands. She tilted her head to look up at her dad. “ _You_ read it.”

“ _Noooo_ ,” Richie pressed. “ _You_ have to read it.” He pointed at the cover. “Don’t you want to know about Artemis? Look: she has a bow and arrow. Like Robin Hood.”

Jean shuffled miserably in Richie’s lap, torn between the effort of having to read and the reward of getting to learn about the cool lady with the bow and arrow.

“ _Fine_ ,” she huffed. She pointed at the cover. “What’s that word?”

“Sound it out,” Richie prompted.

Moaning every bit as dramatically as Richie and Eddie had taught her, Jean finally gave in: “A-rrrr-tttuhhh-eeeee-mmmm-”

* * *

“That’s ridiculous; the actuarial tables I drew up for I-N-G specifically counter-recommend that rate for the sixty-five to eighty group. Why would they want to offer a higher rate than I recommended? They’re going to lose money on that entire age group.”

Richie couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, presumably because Eddie had his AirPods in. He snuck towards the office door and dipped his head barely in, checking to see if the camera was on for Eddie’s Zoom meeting.

“The only group that rate would make any money off within that age range is unmarried women. And although the amount of unmarried women over the age of thirty is increasing steadily, it’s projected as a bell curve over the next forty years. Women in their sixties have a-”

Undershirt. No dress shirt. No jacket. Richie breathed a sigh of relief. No camera on, then.

“-of being divorced, so although there’s an increase in single women over thirty in the past ten years, it’s been matched by a decrease in the divorce rate as well.”

Richie tiptoed into the office, scooping up the supplies Jean needed for her home schooling this morning, as well as his own laptop where he’d been pecking away at a new set for some charity thing he was doing end of the month. Eddie glanced back at him and, when he saw that Richie actually had a _reason_ for being in the office and wasn’t just trying to prank him, smiled and gave him a little wave. Richie blew him a kiss back, immediately winning the sappiness contest because before Eddie could respond his eyes unfocused and he spun back around to his computer.

“That’s frankly not supported by any of the data, Rob. Look, let me go back to that part of my… it’s slide fifteen, here. I understand the concept of showrooming and customer lure but-” Eddie’s jaw clicked shut as a man on the screen silently (from Richie’s point of view) started gesturing. Richie gathered his supplies up and tip-toed back out of the office, shutting the door softly behind him.

“Queen Jean? School time, let’s go.” Richie glanced around for his errant daughter. Under his breath he muttered: “Come on, it’ll be fun: this morning you get to do _subtraction worksheets_ while Papa works on his set…”

Later, at lunch, Richie tilted his head up and Eddie absently leaned down to press a kiss to his temple, neither of them thinking about it. But when the kiss landed Richie felt the scratch of Eddie’s beard hair and twitched, giggling at the tickle against the corner of his eyebrow. Eddie felt the movement and pulled back, glowering down at him.

“I didn’t say anything!” Richie insisted, hands held up. “Your body your choice!”

“That’s right,” Eddie grumbled as he pulled his pre-prepped salad out of the fridge. Richie poked at his leftover chicken stir-fry from last night, considering Eddie as he portioned out his salad dressing.

“So has anyone in the office seen it yet?” Richie dared to ask.

“Why do you think I leave my camera off?” Eddie pointed out.

“So you can show up to work in your boxers, obviously.”

“There is that,” Eddie agreed. “But, secondarily.”

“Cool, cool,” Richie commented, keeping his expression carefully neutral. He knew he wasn’t succeeding much, but hey, at least he wasn’t _actively_ running his mouth, right? That had to count for _something_.

Eventually Eddie sighed and set down his fork, looking over at Richie with those big doe eyes of his. “This is literally the first time in my adult life I’ve had the chance to grow a beard,” he explained. “Working from home, not having to go into the office… You know I got a job at a firm straight out of undergraduate, right? And it’s not like I was capable of growing a beard back then. _Don’t_.” He jabbed his fork at Richie. Richie mimed zipping his mouth shut. “So, I figure. Before the whole thing is… fucking Santa Claus white. I just thought it’d be… you know. Fun. Or something.”

Richie’s sympathy for the scraggly, itchy eyesore ( _ass_ -sore, more like) grew. It was a symbol of Eddie cutting loose, of going after something just for himself for once, of not having to conform to the standards and expectations society had put on him, _man_. And Richie could totally get that, he really could. And Eddie _deserved_ that, of course he did, because like Eddie had just pointed out, he’d been playing the fucking game since nineteen ninety-seven or so.

Richie just wished Eddie had picked anything _besides_ the one thing that exfoliated his most sensitive orifice whenever Eddie got a craving for hors d’ass.

* * *

They were giggling over a Bill interview on Richie’s phone in bed that night, heads pressed together against their pillows, Richie mostly prone, Eddie sitting more upright but still basically level with him.

_“You get this all the time but I have to ask it anyway: so where’d you get your ideas from? Especially this last one: an evil spider who can turn into your parents? Shudder me timbers.”_

_“Haha, uh, yeah. Unfortunately it’s the same answer as every author: I d-don’t know! The forms the monsters take are secondary anyway, to the psychology of the ch-characters. This book was about children, and what is every child afraid of? Their p-parents. Not of_ them _, but of d-disappointing them, or abandonment, or abuse… A child is completely d-dependent on the whims of these adults, and that’s real horror.”_

_“Yeah, but what about the spider?”_

_“Well spiders are just fucking scary.”_

Eddie’s forehead tapped against Richie’s as he laughed hard. “He’s such a fucking liar!” he complained, wheezing between giggles. “He fucking cribs our life story and then he spins this bullshit about psychology. The psychology is _you just wrote down what happened to us, dick!_ ”

“Well _you_ didn’t do it,” Richie pointed out.

“Fuck no: I make better money easier than writing a fucking two-thousand page book.”

“I think it’s like, fifteen hundred pages, tops.”

“ _You_ write it down,” Eddie challenged him.

“I did! Kind of. Well. You know. The comedy, fiction version that sounds non-fiction.”

“It’s really fucking weird that the science-fictional horror version of our lives is the real version and the normal sounding schmaltz you spin for your act is the fiction.”

“‘Schmaltz?’” Richie whined.

Eddie’s eyes gleamed as he glanced over at Richie. “Yeah. Schmaltz. You talk way too much about how much you love me and Jean. People don’t want to hear that shit.”

“But it’s the truth…” Richie murmured, letting his voice get all low and sultry. Eddie smirked as he dipped down for the kiss Richie was waiting for. Richie’s phone quickly disappeared off the edge of the bed as they made out with intent, boxers shoved off and dicks rapidly swelling under the covers.

“Mmm, Richie,” Eddie moaned, tongue halfway down his throat. He pulled back to bite at Richie’s jaw, his neck, his shoulders. Richie squirmed under his touch, whimpering as Eddie nipped and licked a scorching path across his skin.

But then he started to push Richie onto his stomach and Richie had to stop, whimpering turning into a sad whine of disappointment.

“Eddie, baby-”

“Don’t fucking call me-”

“I told you: you can’t.”

Eddie frowned at him in confusion for a second before the realization spread across his face. And then he scowled, patchy beard unable to hide the severe downturn of his mouth.

“You’re not fucking serious.”

Richie groaned, scratching a hand through his hair. “Dude, my asshole feels like it got rimmed by Sonic the Hedgehog. I’m not letting you down there again with that facial porcupine.”

“Well am I a hedgehog or a porcupine, make up your fucking mind.”

“You’re a pissy little wannabe-bear, is what you are.”

“I’m not shaving for you,” Eddie repeated. “You _said_. You said at lunch, it’s my body, my choice.”

“Yes, completely stand by that, rah rah, you are strong, you are invincible, you are-” Eddie glared harder, “-man, you are definitely one hundred percent masculine man.” Unwatered lawn-looking beard aside. “But this is about _my_ body, too, and it’s a literal pain in the ass so until you shave it, no more dining out at the Richie buffet.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m not punishing you!” Richie shouted. “I’m not _bargaining_ with you or trying to fucking manipulate you into shaving! I’m just saying-!”

“You’re weaponizing sex!”

“I am _so_ not weaponizing sex, come on, I am ready to do literally every other sex thing with you right this second, excluding exactly one thing: your Edward Scissor-mouth poking out my brown eye.”

Eddie’s face screwed up in disgust. Except, it wasn’t disgust, because in spite of his best efforts he burst out laughing, throwing himself back down against his pillow. “Fuck you,” he said again, through tears. “Fuck you, no, get off, fuck- Edward Scissor-mouth, what the _fuck_ -”

Richie grinned and dived on top of his husband, kissing the laughter straight out of his mouth. He made sure to grind his hips down against Eddie’s for good measure, and sure enough, they both at least had a half-chub going for them.

“Babe, you are so sexy to me, no matter what you do. Beard, clean shaven, purple hair—if you went full T-R-U-M-P and dyed your skin orange and gave yourself a bleached Brazilian blow out, I would still let you annihilate my asshole like we were a couple teenagers at a house party where the parents were out of town for the weekend-”

“That’s fucking disgusting,” Eddie griped. “Every single part of that is fucking disgusting why would you even-”

“It’s just the skin of my asshole cannot physically handle the… rugged manliness of your beard.”

Eddie glowered, but Richie knew he was getting through to him.

“It’s not _rugged_ …” Eddie hedged.

Yeah, it really fucking wasn’t. Not with the bald spots between the mustache and the goatee or how it could only grow a quarter of the way up his cheeks. But Richie wasn’t about to _say_ that. Not when they were so close to a détente.

“My sexy, manly lumberjack,” Richie cooed.

Eddie was giving in beneath his touch, kissing him longer and wetter. Eventually Eddie reached up and wrapped his arms and legs around Richie like the little octopus he was, and Richie knew he’d won. Or at least, they’d come to a peaceful compromise. As Richie nuzzled his nose against Eddie’s, he asked:

“So what I’m hearing is you want _me_ to eat _you_ out?”

The pillow he got to the side of the head for that was pretty well-deserved.

* * *

“Morning, gorgeous,” Eddie murmured behind him. At the stove, Richie smiled as he flipped Jean’s pancakes. He could hear Eddie’s socks padding over the tile floor towards him.

“Morn-” A sudden tickle at the base of his neck, “- _shit_!”

Richie’s arm jerked hard. The pancakes went flying. Eddie yelped in pain. Richie’s head suddenly hurt. He dropped the pan onto the stove and flipped it off as fast as he could, though not before one of the pancakes had landed straight on the electric burner and it burned instantly. Richie spun around, holding the back of the head, to find Eddie holding his forehead.

“What the fuck!” Eddie shouted.

“ _Me_ what the fuck? _You_ what the fuck!” Richie shouted back.

Jean giggled.

Richie groaned and Eddie groaned and Eddie, still holding his forehead, stepped towards Jean. “Don’t… we meant ‘fudge…’ just. Don’t say that, okay Jeanie?”

“You know the rules, Mean Jean,” Richie reminded her. “Those are Papa Words, right?”

Jean giggled again. Then she pointed at the stove. “Dinosaurs?”

Richie groaned and looked back at the stove where the charcoal burnt remains of a pancake sat, fused with the flat surface of his stove. Fantastic.

“Just a minute, Jean. Sorry.” He reached up on top of the fridge where he kept his stash of treats. “Here,” he tossed a bag down onto the kitchen table. Damn: Entenmann’s. That was a pretty high price to pay. “Have some chocolate chip muffins.”

“Richie-”

“Come here. Are you okay?”

Richie grabbed some ice from the fridge and wrapped a paper towel around it before pressing it to Eddie’s forehead. It already looked red. Eddie glowered at him as he took the improvised icepack.

“Am _I_ alright? What the… _fudge_ … is wrong with you! I said ‘morning!’”

“I’m ticklish!” Richie explained. “You can’t just-” he gestured at Eddie’s beard.

That just caused his glower to deepen. “You gave me a fucking- damn- _darn_ it!- concussion because you hate my beard?”

“It wasn’t on purpose!” Richie tried to keep his voice somewhere lower than the register of ‘dog whistle’ but he wasn’t having much success. “You just… Right on my neck, it felt like… like a bug’s wings tickling me or something! You _know_ I’m ticklish, this isn’t _new_ -”

“A _bug_?” Eddie growled. “So now my beard is a _bug_?”

“Jesus fu- _udging_ … Cripse?” Richie sighed over his own minced oath. “I wasn’t standing there thinking ‘I’m going to get my husband back for his Michael Cera-looking facial hair,’ I was thinking ‘Hmmm pancakes,’ and ‘mmm husband,’ and then ‘GAH, BUG!’”

“You’re fudging ridiculous,” Eddie pointed out.

“It comes naturally, I swear.”

“Papa, I need more milk.”

Richie glanced over to see Jean had successfully decimated his pack of Entenmann’s. Damn it. And they weren’t going to the grocery store for another week.

* * *

Richie was moaning, humping back against Eddie’s hips. Eddie wasn’t inside him—not yet, at least—because they’d mostly just woken up. Eddie had been spooning against Richie’s back, morning wood pressed against the cleft of his ass, and Richie found himself rolling gently back against that warm, welcoming hardness instinctively. Then Eddie had woken up, and had started pushing back, and now they were both panting, warm and sweaty wrapped up under their comforter, not wanting to move to get lube or change positions, not wanting to stop.

“Fuck, Eddie,” Richie moaned as Eddie mouthed wetly at his neck.

“Hrgghhh,” Eddie groaned back.

“I feel like I’m fucking gaping open for you,” Richie groaned. “I feel like my asshole is like… it’s fucking begging for it, Eddie. Come on, can you just… I want you in-”

“You’re not wet,” Eddie warned him. He sucked at Richie’s shoulder. Licked a line down his back. “I could get you wet.”

“Ungh, yeah, get me wet,” Richie moaned.

Eddie slipped away, licking his way down Richie’s back. Richie bent one leg to give him easier access, moaning as Eddie’s tongue licked its way down his crack. Oh, fuck. Oh, yes, Eddie, baby. Eddie’s fingers pulled apart his cheeks, chin lead the way as his tongue dipped lower and lower. Richie shuddered, full-bodied, at the feel of Eddie’s scratchy beard trailing down his ass, rubbing over his hole. As Eddie licked at the rim, that beard scraped at his taint, at his asshole, over-stimulating the already sensitive nerves in that area. But Eddie’s tongue was a soft, soothing balm, and the combination of the two was driving Richie _crazy_.

“Fuck, ungh, I could come like this,” Richie moaned.

Eddie made a muffled noise of approval, shoving his face harder into Richie’s ass. His fingers yanked at Richie’s cheeks, spreading him _wide_ , so wide it burned. Then his tongue was poking its way inside of him, lapping at the outside, diving in again, fluttering inside his hole and getting him _soaked,_ from the inside out. Richie cried a little, grabbing onto his pillow and just lying there on his side, letting his husband tongue-fucking him into oblivion. It was too early for this. It was the perfect time for this. Richie floated in some sort of liminal space of maximum arousal as Eddie ate him out until he was dripping, front and back, _soaking_ , just begging for Eddie to get inside him.

Two hours later, Richie was on his second cup of coffee when Eddie came back from his run, and just in time, too. Eddie practically _bounded_ over to give Richie a kiss, in an _especially_ peppy mood this morning, because of course he was, the hiney-eating fiend.

“Be right back,” Richie told him after accepting a kiss from his sweaty, scratchy beard. Eddie nodded and turned to Jean, eyeing up her breakfast selection this morning, which was apple slices and peanut butter. He stopped her just as she went to dip one directly into the jar.

“No, no, no. Here. You scoop it _out_ of the jar and put it on your plate…”

Richie trotted off to the bathroom smiling, sound of domestic life music to his ears.

He came out of the bathroom ten minutes later, feeling like he had a cartoon thundercloud over his head. And like he had just passed a cactus through his ass.

He stormed into the kitchen and grabbed Eddie, who was still smiling, expecting to get yanked into a spontaneous make out. But then he saw Richie’s expression and his smile faltered.

“Hey _yyy_ -” Eddie’s voice cracked, trailing off into a nervous giggle.

“Never again,” Richie swore. “No more chocolate sundaes for you. Not until that beard is gone.”

“You weren’t complaining this morning,” Eddie reminded him, eyes dark.

Man, fuck those bedroom eyes. They’d gotten him into _enough_ trouble lately. And his asshole was still on fucking _fire_ , so at least that served as a reminder to _stay strong_.

“Yeah, because I got a little wrapped up in the moment and I’m _weak_ , Eddie. _You’re_ supposed to be all my impulse control!”

“Impulse control?! _I’ve_ never had any impulse control, _you’re_ supposed to have impulse control. I’m the one with the temper; you’re supposed to be steady-sailing!”

Richie scrubbed at his own cheeks, eyes squeezed shut. “Fudge. We forgot to marry someone with any self-restraint. I knew this household was missing something. Do you think we can rely on Jean for it?”

“Well not in the bedroom,” Eddie pointed out, reasonably. But he had started smiling again, like he thought this was _over_. Which it was _not_! Richie waggled a finger at him.

“No! No! I’m serious! Neither of us actually pushed Jeanie out ourselves, but I just had an experience that I think roughly equates.”

“If I was a woman I’d call you out on that,” Eddie pointed out.

“Don’t care. Do you know how it feels to try and sh- _poop_ a brick through freshly aerated soil? Hm? No, you don’t, because _I’ve_ been your personal guide to the wide world of right-pocket handkerchief delights, and I’ve never dipped my stick without an _extensive_ application of motor oil beforehand. But that’s what this is like. Are you following these lovingly-crafted metaphors because I had a lot of time to think them up while I got bum-attacked by a Hork-Bajir.”

“That’s a deep cut.”

“Yeah, just like _MY ASSHOLE_!” Richie shouted.

Jean giggled. Richie sighed and slapped a hand under his glasses. “Lean Jean, you know the rules-”

“Papa words,” Jean giggled. She held up an apple slice. “Want an apple, Papa?”

“Thank you, sweetie.” Richie dutifully took a little bite out of her apple slice and passed it back.

He turned back to Eddie and held up a finger. “Never. Again.”

Eddie crossed his arms. “I’m not shaving it.”

“Fine,” Richie shrugged. “I don’t care. But you’re not going down to the waste management plant until you do.”

“Fine.”

“Fine!”

“What plant? Is it a flower?” Jean asked, blinking up at Richie.

And then they were both laughing as Richie tried to come up with a flower that wasn’t somehow a euphemism for his anus.

* * *

Four days into the coldest of Cold Wars (though with decidedly more gay sex than any of those guys probably ever had… unless…?) Eddie was laying on the floor of their living room, tossing Jeanie up into the air and playing some sort of game of pretend with her which involved making shooting noises with his mouth and lots of fake screaming and giggling. Richie stopped just within the living room entryway to watch them together, leaning against the wall and feeling his heart swell ten sizes in his old grinchy chest.

“Daddy, ahh, no!!”

“Pshoo pshoo pshoo! Ahhhh, you’re going doooown!!” Eddie bent his arms dramatically, dropping Jean six inches just to stop her with a jolt. Jean screamed and laughed, limbs flailing, red hair flying every which way like a sunburst.

“No, Daddy! Help!”

“Oh no! Here they come again!”

“Noooooo!!”

“They’re coming in… pshoo pshoo pshoo!”

Jean screamed as Eddie eased her down the rest of the way, bringing her to a “crash” landing on his chest. She kept screaming as he peppered with her kisses, slapping at him as she laughed so hard Richie couldn’t see how she even had time to draw breaths.

But then Jean’s giggles abruptly dropped off and she shoved less playfully at Eddie.

“Daddy! Daddy, no!”

Eddie stopped immediately, of course, able to hear the shift in her tone. He pulled back, looking up at her in concern.

“What’s wrong, Jean?”

“You’re scratchy, Daddy.” She wrinkled her nose up and pressed both her hands against his cheeks. “Stop it.”

Richie couldn’t really see Eddie’s expression from where he was. Eddie was facing away from Richie, and his head was tilted up so he could look at her as she sat on his stomach. But then Jean looked up and saw Richie and flung herself off Eddie, running full-tilt at him.

“Papa!”

“Jelly-Jean!” Richie shouted back, bending down and holding his arms out to scoop her up. He made helicopter noises as he spun her around, her feet flying out wildly as she screamed.

“Daddy was playing airplane fights!” she explained.

“We were playing ‘Pacific Theater,’” Eddie corrected from the floor. He pushed himself up, smiling wryly. “But I blame her after-school tutor for her not knowing that.”

“ _Moi_?!” Richie asked. He stopped spinning, letting Jean crawl up onto his shoulders like the little spider-monkey she was. “Ninety percent of a child’s learning occurs in the home, Eds! You should read some of those parenting books you buy. If there’s a dearth of knowledge in a child, the parents share blame with the schools. _Especially_ a _working_ parent.”

“Right, so if a parent is trying to, say, multi-task while they’re _supposed_ to be teaching their child by, just a random example, working on a set for an upcoming sketch-”

“It’s for _charity_ ,” Richie gasped, affronted.

“-then _that_ parent can be blamed?”

Richie sighed, defeated. “Fine. You’re right. I accept responsibility for our six-year-old not knowing about the Pacific theater.”

“Good.” Eddie leaned in and gave Richie a kiss while Jean blew raspberries into Richie’s shoulder. “Make sure you put the Red Baron on the list, too. That’s up next.”

“‘Show our daughter Peanuts holiday specials during school time,’ got it.”

Eddie was smiling as he wandered off, leaving Richie and Jean in the living room together. Richie bounced Jean in one arm.

“Hey, that actually sounds fun. Want to see if Netflix has some Peanuts?”

“Peanuts?” Jean asked, smacking her lips.

“Oh, kid. We’ve got some _educating_ to do.”

Ten minutes later and Jean was giggling furiously at Lucy pulling that football away from poor Charlie Brown, and Richie was vaguely wondering if this was going to be a bad influence on his already prank-prone little monster. Eddie slipped onto the couch next to Richie, and Richie leaned into him automatically, because he was touch-starved for the first forty years of his life and planned on spending the next forty making up for it, with interest.

“Great, now she’s going to try and pull that football thing on us,” Eddie pointed out.

“I dunno, I think there’s at least a fifty-fifty chance she’ll try and set up the psychiatrist stall in her playroom. Once you explain to her, in excruciating detail, what a psy- hey!”

Richie had turned to smile at his husband when he was suddenly confronted with… his husband. His husband’s _face_. His husband’s _normal,_ cleanly shaven _face_.

“What the-”

“Fudge,” Eddie reminded him, with a nod to Jean on the floor in front of them.

“You shaved!”

“I was never going to be able to grow a full beard anyway,” Eddie said with a shrug. Like he hadn’t just… _reversed_ a week of fighting in ten minutes! Out of the blue! For no fucking reason!

Except… Wait…

“Did you shave it for _Jean_?!” Richie accused.

Eddie stared straight ahead at the Peanuts cartoon like it was the most engrossing thing he’d ever seen. But of course there was a smile fighting at the corners of his mouth—which Richie could now _see_ because that scrub brush was finally cleared away.

“What are you complaining about now?” Eddie asked, all casual like he hadn’t just blown right across the thirty-eighth parallel and declared peace in the middle east. Or something—Richie was having a hard time with his metaphors because Eddie’s face was clean-shaven again, and he smelled like his expensive shaving cream, and he looked so _fresh_ and _clean_. Richie’s eyes nearly crossed, he was getting so into it.

“Nothing,” Richie finally stuttered out. He sat back on the couch, arm and leg pressed firm against Eddie’s. “Nope. Nothing at all.”

So what if Eddie was willing to shave for their daughter before he would for Richie? If anything, that made Richie love him even _more_. After all, Jean’s wants and needs should come before his every time. At the same time, now Richie got to benefit from Queen Jean’s smooth-faced Eddie preference. Benefit _all night long_.

**Author's Note:**

> Art by the fantastic [stitchy](https://stitchyarts.tumblr.com/), who also writes Reddie fic and can be found [here on AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy) as well!


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